


Mirror Image

by xSparklingRavenx



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Angst, Gen, Includes references to Burial at Sea, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-14 05:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1254379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xSparklingRavenx/pseuds/xSparklingRavenx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You've broken so many mirrors trying to find a world where Booker is still alive."</p>
<p>Set post game. Elizabeth faces what she's done and what she's going to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror Image

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually a birthday fic for my friend Cazza! Although it ended up more morose than I anticipated. As we don't have Burial at Sea Part 2 yet , I wasn't able to elaborate anymore on the topic when I presented it here, but there is a reference to its trailer! Either way, I hope the fic still enjoyable (and in character)!

You've broken so many mirrors trying to find a world where Booker is still alive and maybe, if you clutch the shards hard enough to send the blood running down your delicate hands he'll be there and he'll take you to Paris like he promised. You open tears, those mirror worlds of yours, and you shatter glass as you climb through to another useless world where he's still dead and Comstock never existed. Seven years, fourteen, twenty one, twenty eight - your bad luck just keeps adding up. But it's okay. If you can find him, your father who didn't know, the man who gave you away and in another world took you for himself then maybe, just maybe, it'll be worth it.

You did find him once. In an abnormality of a universe that didn't fracture like glass when you opened it up and forced your way in. It didn't collapse in on itself like the others that you tore Booker and Comstock from when you drowned him in a Baptist's river. In that world you found him, younger, smooth-faced, mouth not set in a permanent frown, and in his arms you found you. Small. Innocent. Little finger intact. You didn't interrupt. You stayed away. At least then you and him could be happy in one snapshot of the infinite possibilities you unfold.

But that means you're still alone doesn't it Elizabeth? Or, Anna DeWitt. In your life you have always had something, whether it was Songbird or the tower or the knowledge that there was something out there. In the netherworld of your infinites you don't have anything at all, except the hope that maybe if you break enough mirrors you'll stumble across him. If you keep looking, you might be able to forget about how you felt his life stop under your fingers as water filled his lungs and stole away the oxygen.

He never struggled. Does that make it worse, Anna? You've murdered before. You took a knife and drove it into Daisy Fitzroy's chest to stop her from killing that poor, poor boy, just like you held Booker under to stop him becoming that awful, awful man. The blood splattered over you and stained your clothes, your hair, your mind. But, was it murder? Murder suggests unprovoked. Slaughter is unneeded. Killing them was neither. You did what you had to do.

Maybe, it wasn't murder. Maybe, Anna, it was sacrifice. You gave up innocence the first time and threw away the title of the lamb that defined you. The second time you gave up your father. The first wasn't so bad. The second almost broke you to pieces and left you a wandering empty shell of a person.

You see him sometimes. Hear him. Like an afterimage. He's on a small chair and he looks exactly how you remember him; his hair messy as it always was, the light stubble around his jaw omnipresent.  The guitar fits in his arms as if it was made for him, and his fingers - calloused, made for holding a gun, he was a soldier once - strum the chords delicately, so delicately.

The tune he plays is always the same, the one you have a faint recollection of from when you were a baby and he would sing it as you went to sleep. You know the song by heart, but you don't dare sing. You might break the spell, this beautiful lie.

He sings it instead, his voice gruff but the words shining through regardless. _There's a better home awaiting in the sky,_ he hums and you die inside because that home brought you nothing but despair and misery. You feel as if you might break apart like those mirrors, the shards of you scattered about your infinites. Maybe it would be better that way.

And then he sings it, the line you dread. _Now the family is parted, will it be complete one day?_ You cast your eyes away, touch the pads of your fingers to your pendant at your throat.

You don't know, you want to say. You've tried, you've cut your hands fighting through the glass of the tears but your family is not complete and you don't know if it will ever be. He doesn't sing the last chorus. You look up, and he's gone. You broke his image like you broke your mirrors and like how you broke _him._

Oh, Anna. You foolish, silly girl. Deep down inside you know you'll probably never find him. He went away that day when you murderedslaughtered _sacrificed_ him and he's gone forever, like dust in the wind.

How long have you been looking for him now? It's been so long, you can't remember. Maybe it's time to give up, find your world and go back to it. You can go to Paris, still. You can see the Eiffel Tower and you can paint it to your hearts content and you can buy the food and see the sights and stay where you want and, and-

And it'll be empty because your father isn't there to see those sights with you, or eat the food or stay where he thinks is safe and nice for the two of you. Can you even get back to your world? Or is it lost among the shards?

Maybe you're looking because you have nothing to go back to, and anything prospective in these new worlds is better than that. You are God, Anna. All powerful, all knowing. Are you all loving? You're not. You love Booker. You hate Comstock. Gods should not have capacity for hate, but you do. You feel it so strongly. You are still human inside, Anna.

Two names. Two different sides. Is that it? Is Elizabeth the God and Anna the human? Perhaps that is it. Elizabeth is the lamb, the opener of tears, the one who will guide them all. Anna is the daughter of Booker DeWitt.

Like father, like daughter. Comstock the leader, Booker the detective. Two sides of the same coin.

You see him again and again, but it's only his shadow and never really _Booker_. Next time, you finally sing with him. If it's an illusion, you're still happy for it regardless. _Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt._ He didn't want to give you up. He never did. The proof of that is your little finger.

Keep looking, Anna. Has it been years, months, weeks or days? You don't know anymore. Do you look different? Older? Wiser? Keep breaking mirrors, Anna. Keep building up that bad luck.

And eventually that bad luck comes to fruition when you find a world where Comstock still exists and he'll try and take you again because Booker will give you away, just like every time before. _Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt._

You can stop this, you realise, so you stop it. You stand on one side of the tear as Comstock fights Booker for you and you finally, finally play a part. _You're hurting her. She's not your child!_

_She is mine!_

Comstock is shouting and Rosalind is shouting and Robert is shouting and you can't hear, can't think, and the tear is closing and Booker is trying to pull you through and his face, _oh god you'll never forget his face in that moment_  but it's closing and Rosalind is screaming _Oh no, no, look out!_ and then-

That experience changes you, Elizabeth. There is no forgiveness. When Comstock escapes to Rapture to hide and forget, you follow. You won't let him go. Not this time.

And he - he doesn't know and _oh god Booker's face_ and he doesn't realise and the shards of glass bury themselves deep inside you and remind you that this is the man who caused everything, that you hoped to destroy. You asked for Booker back and you got him alright. You got him and the man he had the potential to become. You got him and that and a baby that was you and was dead.

You remember Booker's face as the tear closed. You remember watching it crease and distort in the horror of knowing what was about to happen and that he was helpless to stop it and that in the end it was going to be his fault. You watched him as he pulled that baby through and-

That is on you. You tried to stop it and look what happened. Where is that Booker now? Nowhere good, you imagine. He was left standing in an office with a baby who-who-

You don't want to remember. You don't want to think about Booker standing there with a baby in his arms who's head was in another universe as its body lie dead with him.

Sally is all Comstock cares about in Rapture, but when he remembers, you're right there beside him to see it all.

_You had to have me, didn't you?_

The drill spears him. His blood covers you like the blood of Daisy Fitzroy as you took that knife in your delicate hands, clean hands and forced it past her skin and into her body. You haven't sacrificed this time. You lost innocence and your father already. What else do you have to lose? It doesn't feel evil. Not this time.

You are Elizabeth. You are God.

The shards of glass still rip you to shreds.


End file.
